


Where Wild Things Sleep (And We Sigh Over Deep Shit)

by The_Divine_Fool



Category: South Park
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Demons, Ghosts, Haunting, M/M, Supernatural Elements, Urban Legends, Witchcraft, a haunting in south park
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-29
Updated: 2017-11-29
Packaged: 2019-02-08 05:30:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12857787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Divine_Fool/pseuds/The_Divine_Fool
Summary: Spooky stuff happens in South Park.((ON HIATUS until further notice -- but i still like this piece okay))





	Where Wild Things Sleep (And We Sigh Over Deep Shit)

**Author's Note:**

> There are so many things I should be working on, right now, but this came up instead. I feel like the supernatural horror element of South Park is so often eclipsed in these ships and pairings -- because everything's a little easier in a normal world where giant hamsters aren't on the attack and testicles are not a plausible or entertaining mode of transportation -- but let's bring it back now, y'all.
> 
>  _Where Wild Things Sleep_ draws from ghost stories and urban legends I've collected -- mostly by word of mouth -- over the years living here in New England. My friends from the south tell me that graveyards and shit are treated a little different up here -- not neatly enclosed embankments with gates and titles and parking lots -- in New England, we live among the dead. 
> 
> Also, if you have any good stories/first-hand experiences with the supernatural -- hit me up. I've been to a couple of the most haunted places in the world, but I never get tired of hearing about this stuff.

### 

“Let me get this straight -- you get your hands on two ATVs, and the first person you take out is _Butters_?”

“McCormick,” Cartman sighed, jumping down from the Polaris four-wheeler and tucking the keys into his pocket. “For the last time, they’re _Stotch’s_. I _had_ to go with him first. Besides, he didn’t want you near his shit after the drone incident.”

Kenny circled around his own vehicle with his hands shoved in his pockets, blue eyes scowling. “That was like ten years ago.”

“What about that night-vision camera equipment he got, couple years back? You remember that, don’t you?”

“That was different. How’s I s’posed to know it was his _mom_ skinny-dipping with Pastor Polk? And who gets a divorce over some grainy camera footage, anyway?”

“It’s like I always say,” Cartman said, beginning to pick his way down the slope of the hill. “Poor kids can’t be trusted with rich kids’ toys.”

“Where are we, anyway?”

“Cedar grove,” Cartman said, coming to a stop in front of a chain-link fence at the bottom of the hill. 

“I can _see_ that, you piece of shit. Why’re we goin’ _in?_ ”

Cartman hooked his fingers in the loose links and began his ascent, the chains chattering high against the metal crossbeam. “I wanna show you this creepy place we found. They say it’s haunted.”

Kenny snorted but Cartman heard him take to the chain-links beneath him just as he crested the fence, folded over a slackened partition in the barbed wire, and dropped into the wood on the opposite side. The air smelled different there, on the other side, cloistered as it was between towering stalks of pine and cedar. 

McCormick landed with a muffled _thump_ beside him. “Better be worth getting tetanus from the damn fence.”

The place wasn’t far, if Cartman was remembering right -- a few clicks from the center of the grove, maybe, heading east. His ass was aching from riding the Polaris all morning, anyway, and he was covered with a layer of road-dirt thrown up from McCormick’s damn rear tires, so he didn’t mind the walk or the fact that his blond friend was bitching about it. Show the guy a good time all morning on the rec paths, Cartman thought venomously, and all he got for it was shit over the rusty fence.

“ _Butters_ ,” Kenny said again. “ _Seriously?_ ”

“Dude, relax.”

“I mean why don’t you fuckin’ blow him again, while you’re at it.”

“That was _one_ time, McCormick!” Eric exploded. “I was _eight_ , I didn’t _know_ , alright? Now whatever you _ac_ tually wanna say, fucking _say_ it so I don’t have to listen to your pussy-foot bitching the whole walk over.”

Their feet seemed to crunch through the silence itself, for a few minutes. 

“Come _on_ ,” Cartman said, the heavy air getting on his nerves. “I know you got something to say. I can _hear_ it under your fucking hood, bro."

"I _had_ to take Butters first, you know I did -- what’s the big deal? We came here, we filmed some stuff on his dad’s cameras, and split -- end of story. It was dead boring and I wanted him to be you. There.”

“Yeah?” Kenny said, suddenly in breathing distance. Cartman got a close-up of his eyes filled up with some horrible _know_ ing, eyes blue like denim, teeth crooked as Kyle’s turd-burgling lawyer father. He got the feeling Kenny already _knew_ all of this -- like he must already _know_ he preferred him over Butters -- just liked to hear him say embarrassing shit. He’d always been like that. 

Cartman’s vision whited out over a sudden grip at the back of his neck and he ducked and twisted to get out of the hold, but his movements only let the poor piece of crap fold his forearm over his throat and start pressing down on his fucking windpipe. “Don’t -- _touch_ me!”

But it was like shaking off a sea urchin and while Cartman struggled Kenny laughed and they lost their footing in the blanket of pale brown needles. 

Even after the miracle of puberty and the discovery of some key outlets for Cartman’s aggression in the form of school athletics, he was still probably twice the size of Kenny. The only difference was now he had the skill to throw around his weight properly, with the aid of football and ice hockey. 

But while Eric was hitting the weight room and getting out of classes with phony physician's notes, Kenny was doing, like, _parkour_ or some shit, and the underfed blond was actually built like a fucking rubber band -- it was the science of tension and counterbalance, and trying to wrestle someone who had _no fucking rules_ was like trying to entice a shark into a game of rock-paper-scissors. 

McCormick had writhed on top and was choking him out, sort of, and in the meantime one of his cruddy legs was putting pressure on his crotch -- and if Cartman found anything remotely sexual about the situation, he was wrong, just plain wrong -- and he finally managed to fling his friend away with a hand fisted in the hood of his parka. 

“It’s just,” Kenny said, breathing heavily as he pushed himself up from the leaves. “You went and joined the nerd brigade this year -- “

“The Ro _botics_ team, fucker,” Cartman corrected, slowly getting to his feet. “It’s the Robotics team, okay? And I’m only doing it because Jo-po’s giving me physics credit.”

“But dude, that’s just it -- you’re on first-name basis with _teachers_ \-- “

“That’s not his name!” He insisted, in the high pitch of denial Cartman never quite shook off after childhood. “It means _ass_ in Russian!”

“Whatever -- all I know is, you spend every Wednesday night with Butters, and Scott Malkenson, and pimply Pat Tookey -- “

“And Stan! Stan does Robotics.”

“Well, how’s _that_ s’posed to make me feel better? All that means is one more asshole who’s riding ATVs before _me_ \-- “

“That is not even re _motely_ what it means. And it’s only once a week -- “

“What about last Saturday?” Kenny challenged, kicking up a long shoot of leaves and twigs from the ground. 

“What about it?”

“We were s’posed to go down to the river and throw rocks, remember? You don’t even fuckin’ re _member_.”

“Agh,” Cartman grumbled, pinching the bridge of his nose as the memory came to clarity. “That was Hitchcock night.”

“That sounds like a fuggin’ style of BDSM.”

“Maybe to _you_ , retard. To the rest of us it’s horror film _legend_.”

Cartman stared at his friend’s back as they picked their way through the woods. They’d known each other so long, he realized, that he’d stopped putting _ef_ fort into it. Like he just got used to him being there, like an old couch -- like he never really thought about it much, but if someone took it away from him, he’d miss it like heck.

“Look,” Cartman said, trotting to catch up with him. “You never cared when I blew you off before. What’s the deal? Just fuckin’ say it.”

“Nothin’. Just -- ” Kenny paused to shake his hands from his pockets and pull his hood back up. “Since you got into Robotics -- nah, since we got to high school, it’s like -- “

“C’mon, take a shit or get off the fuckin’ bowl.”

McCormick stop walking and turned a hard gaze on him. “I feel like I’m missing out on you, man.”

“You -- feel like you’re... “ Cartman blustered, angry for no reason, really. He knew his ears were probably _glow_ ing red, though, and that pissed him off. “ _What?_ You’ve never even _liked_ me, McCormick.”

“Yeah, but -- so? When has that ever mattered? We used to hang out,” as he said it, Kenny bumped into Cartman’s side as they walked, as if that might take the sting out of the words and the confirmation thought that crossed Cartman’s mind: _never even liked me_. “What happened to -- to paintball tournaments in the rain? Setting trash fires under the interstate bridge? Or painting up the subway? We used to go drain-fishing on 116th -- “

“We got ar _rested_ for half of that shit, Ken.”

Kenny was silent for a minute. Then a smile broke over his face. “ _Grave_ -trotting, dude, remember? Night-creeping! And remember when Jimbo took us camping in the Estes?”

“That’s all shit we did the _four_ of us,” Cartman retorted. “And if you wanna know why _that_ stopped happening, ask Wendy Testaburger and the Mathletes.”

He went quiet again, almost long enough for Eric to think he’d won the argument. But he didn’t feel… happy about that, exactly.

“2 a.m. runs to Ali Baba’s Kabob Shop,” Kenny said. “What ‘appened to those? I really liked those.”

“I haven’t been to Ali Baba’s in a long time.” Cartman admitted. “I always figured you only went for the free food.”

Kenny barked a laugh. “You didn’t haveta pay for my food, dude -- “

“Bullshit! It was the only way to get you to _go_ \-- “

“Hey, not only can I pay for my own fucking gyro, I am also _al_ ways down for a night ride. I just never said anything ‘cause it was pretty much the only kind of nice thing you ever did for me.”

Cartman was forced to take a step back from the conversation and look at his own motives. Besides the fact that he had just assumed Kenny was too fucking poor to afford a sandwich, he also admitted that -- since middle school, maybe -- he had internalized his peers’ idea that most people would rather lick hair out of a drain than hang out with him.

“That’s a lie -- “ Cartman found his voice. “Stan says he invites you out for burn rides all the time, but you never show.”

Kenny gnawed at a hangnail and then examined it. “Because there’s nothing in it for me.”

No matter how he tried, Cartman could not fathom a utility function which did not value _free food_ or _free weed_. The effort of the computation caused him a minor mental breakdown, in fact, right there in the cedar grove. 

“Are you saying,” he tried, stumbling over the thought as it tried to become words. “I’m the -- thing you’re -- in it for? Are you _in_ it for me?”

“You think I’m crazy.”

“ _Bat_ shit,” Cartman sputtered. “You been sniffing your mom’s rock too much, McCormick. That or she’s putting _Drano_ in your soup again to collect the life insurance.”

“Jesus,” Kenny hissed a breath through his teeth, like he was disappointed, or something. “That's the other thing -- you don’t even rip like you used to. I’ve heard better poor jokes from Craig Tucker.”

Cartman felt the hair on the back of his neck bristle. "Craig -- Craig _Tucker_ is _minutiae_ compared to me, okay? Craig Tucker is a _tard_ igrade -- he's so small I measure him in _bo_ sons. You think he can rip on you? Bitch, I invented the ground his humor walks on -- I'm the motherfucking _Devil_ ; Tucker's just the mook handing out ice water in Hell. If you think he's better than me, then you really are out of your damn mind."

“No, it’s just like -- you’re not putting any effort into it, you know?”

“I didn’t take you out here just to be told I’m losing my touch.”

Kenny turned on him and stopped, forcing Cartman to stop too. “So why did you?”

“Did you think you had to get your hands on four-wheelers,” he continued, sidling closer until they were nearly nose to nose. “Just to get me to come out with you?”

Cartman snorted, and spoke lowly -- to match the sort of slow quiet settling around them, falling between the trees to settle in around their toes. “Keep telling yourself that.”

Maybe it was force of habit and maybe it was just for something to do with his hands, but either way Cartman reached out with barely a thought and yanked McCormick’s hood down, granting him a clearer look at the smug smile slung across his face.

“The four-wheelers are pretty dope, though, right?” Cartman said. 

“Hey,” he said, before Kenny could respond, and nodded over his shoulder. “We’re here.”

The trees didn’t bleed out, thin out, or fall out -- they just stopped, a few yards away, ending in a perfect ring around a small homestead. It was a one-story job the size of a modest trailer, maybe. Its white paint had gone yellow and scaly with age, though the front door had retained its garish purple sheen despite the weathering of the rest of the property; a spat of graffiti stood out on its face: _You Will Never Leave_ , which Cartman found sort of boring and hackneyed. He’d already tore up the place with Butters the other night, anyway -- and that was like midnight on a _Wednesday_ , for God’s sake, not mid-afternoon on a lazy Friday with McCormick. 

Kenny started picking his way through the front yard, so Eric followed.

A lot of weird shit lived in the clearing around the building: there was stuff you’d expect, like tires, an overturned grill, an old cast iron bathtub full of rags, the shell of a VW bug with burn marks around the windows; and then there was stuff you wouldn’t expect, exactly -- like a tube of concrete sticking a few feet out of the grass, covered with a cross-hatch iron grate, or the many-handed coat rack trying to jump out of the living room window, it’s knobs and hooks all strung with creeper vines like a nasty wig.

The first thing Kenny did was jump into the pit on the eastern side of the yard. It was several meters long and at least seven or eight feet deep. Cartman could tell from the uneven scoring in the earth walls that it was dug by hand. He slid down the shallowest slope into it after McCormick, and felt the daytime sort of change, once his feet hit the packed dirt floor of the strange chamber. The pit was filled with orderly towers of newspaper, taller than either of them and all sort of melting into each other from age and exposure. The way they were arranged reminded Cartman of the big office buildings on 116th Street. 

Where the sunlight hit the top of the stack, the paper had faded to a petrified yellow and then sunbleached white. He was left with the impression of words fleeing, sinking down underground and away from the hot interactions of the sun. 

“Why are they blue?” came McCormick’s voice, and he appeared on the corner of Lexington and Havana, brushing his fingertips over petrified ridges of historical record like buildings risen from the dirt. Whereever the sun could reach them, the stacks were faintly blue.

“Blue is a high-energy wavelength,” Cartman explained without thinking. “The blue won’t break down as fast as red or yellow pigments under UV rays.”

Kenny brushed past him on his way out of the pit wearing a smirk like he’d made a joke of him, somehow. Cartman clawed his way up the shallow slope behind him, scowling.

Inside the house, everything was just the way Cartman remembered. Some of the details stood out in the sunlight where moonlight and night-vision cameras couldn’t quite reach, but it was basically the same lower class dump he remembered. A slight breeze filtered in through the hole in the living room window where the coat rack made its desperate escape. There was a cot without a mattress in the bedroom, and a huge wardrobe shoved up backwards against the wall. The flooring in every room was lightly furred with the dust of old age, pine needles and heavy rolling mothballs. Some kind of dried plant had collected in the corners of the living room, which Cartman suspected was the source of the musty smell all around. The laminate in the kitchen was even filthier, stirring with clods of some kind of animal hair the color of straw. It made Cartman kind of sick, looking at it all in broad daylight. 

Some graffiti in the dark gap where a fridge used to be said: _Eat, Shit, and Die_ in black capital letters. Kenny pulled open some of the cabinets while Cartman bit down on his apparently lackluster poor jokes, and found a milk carton with a rolled up blanket stuffed in the mouth. They exchanged daunted looks and he put it back. 

“This place is s’posed to be haunted?” He murmured, squinting against the sun slanting through the grimy window over the butcher block sink. 

“Lookit it,” Cartman said. “Place is a hunnid-percent trashed. If anything was haunting this place, it was drove out by the gangs on the block. Still have to check the footage from the other night, though. Maybe we caught an orb, or something.”

“I wonder who lived here,” Kenny hummed, continuing to flit around the cramped space like a hound on a goddamn scent-trail. He was just drifting into the bedroom again when Cartman felt the cramp of the small, dirty space double down on him like an itch -- instead of following McCormick, he turned and headed for the back of the building, where a smoky screen door swung on one sad hinge. 

He pushed open the door and jumped over the two broken steps into the backyard, taking a deep breath of open space. The surrounding ring of coniferous trees shivered around him, like an audience on the edge of their seats with delight. Cartman eyed them darkly and fumbled in his pocket for his Camels. The keys to his Polaris fell into the yellowed grass with a mournful chime, and he snatched them up so quickly he nearly threw out his fucking back. 

Just slightly off-center in the dirt patch yard sat an old refrigerator, tipped on its side and sunk in the soil. Networks of gleaming wet peat moss crawled up its ivory side paneling like water deltas or human veins. A dirty old tarp had been flung over the whole thing -- probably black once, now the color of old cobweb -- and in the shredded remains of cedar and pine beside the fridge was a cracked, decorative pot, standing guard like some inanimate doorman or a parking meter. It reminded Cartman of an urn. 

He spat into the dirt beside his feet, just missing the lurid green surface water filling a rusty pail to the brim. Floating in the strangely still water were about a hundred stubby cigar butts. Like larva, Cartman thought. Like at any moment they would grow legs and wings and take off like those disgusting flies that grow in your sink. What were they called? _Drain_ flies, he remembered. He got a ton of them in the house once after trying to grow triops in the bathtub. 

The lurid green water made him uncomfortable, so Cartman looked away, his gaze clattering back and forth over the random assortment of junk in the yard, and thought how it oughta be… _loud_ , or something. Like so many disparate, unloved objects thrown together in one space should make some kind of _noise_. But the wood was quiet. Blanket-tent quiet -- waiting at a red light quiet. 

Perhaps by force of habit, and perhaps because Cartman was accustomed to treating his anxieties with food and the spook factor in the abandoned house was making him kind of hungry, he reached for the door of the sunken fridge and pulled -- it yielded with a dry wheeze and a cascade of dirt and dust over the arm of his favorite jacket.

There was a book inside. 

It wasn’t even that fucked up, which Cartman thought was odd, since the whole property was thoroughly trashed, if not by the elements then by the neighborhood kids. The fridge was caked in dust and the tarp thrown over it was the color of cobweb but the book was untouched -- it had a hollowness to it that seemed to breathe.

Cartman grew bored of the junkyard behind the house and lit up a cigarette to pass the time. But the wind was blowing up in just the right way and the paper started canoeing like a bastard before long. Cartman pulled the stogie away from his mouth and examined it critically. Then he snorted some phlegm onto his tongue and spat onto the ground again -- a long, wet, shameless lugie that dangled for a little bit before he forced it off with a second tsk of his teeth against his tongue -- and scuffed some dirt over it. The wood was quiet, real quiet. 

Eric used the smoke to try to feel out time -- really get a feel for it -- outside the clamor of everyday life. Where he worked at a bagel joint downtown, his line manager was always stepping out for five-minute smokes. Every hour, on the hour, especially during a rush, this guy would totally effing disappear -- and Cartman had hated it, when he first started working there. Why should the bastard get paid for an eight-hour shift, when almost an hour of it was spent sucking death through a straw outside? 

And he hated cigarettes, too. Crutches for the weak-minded, excise taxes designed to make suckers and slaves of the poor -- but after a hundred and ninety days on the line, he started to kind of understand it. Five minutes -- even five minutes in the numbing cold coughing your lungs out on an upturned crate -- was a compartmentalized peace. Like National Suicide Day, people were kind of hoping if they found a _day_ and a _name_ for it, then they wouldn’t have to acknowledge feeling suicidally depressed every other day of the year. Five-minute smoke breaks at work were Cartman’s five designated minutes a day to step outside of time for a moment of peace from the horror. 

He always kind of knew he would become everything he hated, after a while.

Cartman spit some more of his cigarette breath into the leafmold and tossed the rest of the canoeing cigarette into the pail of lurid green water. It spun like a log in the slime until the little blue camel on the white filter faced the sky. He was about to light up another when he heard something deep in the pines. He waited with his lighter poised until he was sure it was nothing, but at his next flick of the igniter it came back again, several meters closer and louder -- a _thump_ ing and _swish_ ing sound, like a very large toad landing in the dry leaves after a long leap. 

Cartman felt something stir into a gaping yawn just behind his throat. Tucked his lighter away and told himself to stop smoking so much weed -- he was getting to be as paranoid as Tweak, for Christ’s sake. Was it just him, or were the colors sort of bleeding out of the trees? It was like sliding through the sepia filter on Instagram. Cartman blinked until his vision flooded with inverse eyelid images of black and white. The next crash of heavy, sagging weight into dry leaves arrived along with a reverberation of shock up his spine -- he jumped. He ran. 

The hinge on the old screen door finally gave way when Cartman flung it open. The sound of its sudden retirement heralded his arrival inside the abandoned home with a hysterical peal of mechanical laughter. His rubber soles drew two long streaks on the floor as he skidded to a stop in the center of the tiny kitchen; mounds of disturbed dust and that strange faded animal hair dammed up against the outsides of his shoes and Cartman was so perturbed by the yawning fear expanding in his chest and the back of his throat that he didn’t even pause to mourn the trailer filth now coating his favorite Sambas. 

“Kenny?” He croaked into the cobweb-gray space. The only response was a slight movement in the hair and dust tangled at his feet. 

Cartman stared at the tumbleweeds of decay shivering on the floor and listened to the sounds of his heartbeat and the distant whisper of wind through the leaves. _The wind._ He thought dimly that if the air was stirring on the kitchen floor then the front door must be open. 

Maybe it was his shot nerves, and maybe it was his backup drive of childishness but Eric couldn’t -- wouldn’t -- touch anything else on the property. He crept from the kitchen clutching at his elbows to avoid brushing anymore at the petrified wood and peeling wallpaper. The front door was cracked and he sucked in a breath to edge sideways through the opening back into the front yard. 

He had hardly managed a hiss of breath past the blockade of panic in his throat when a huge, scraping groan filled the air. 

Cartman scrambled away from the house, lost his footing and felt his fingers sink into the cold dirt before managing to right himself and take a few steps toward the treeline, back the way they came in. It was almost a mile to the fence -- would he even make it? 

“Cartman!”

“Kenny -- ” Cartman whirled around. “What the fuck are you doing?”

Even six yards away, Cartman thought he could see McCormick’s eyebrows raise. He was standing by the concrete tube Cartman suspected was the former resting place of an old septic. 

“Come help me with this.”

The scraping groan rent the air again as Kenny heaved at the iron grate covering the manhole. 

Cartman took a few steps closer, one eye on the old homestead. The air smelled like something burned a long time ago, and the closer he got to the well, the stronger another smell became -- this one more sick-sour like something wilted, a flavor of death unlike the dry petrification of the house because it was moist, organic. It reminded Cartman of the time he forgot a glass of apple juice in the living room for a couple months. 

“I remember that,” Kenny grunted, overhearing his damn thought. “Fuckin’ disgusting, the color it turned. You’re fuckin’ disgusting.”

“I think we should get outa here, man.”

“What?” Kenny said, huffing for breath as the grate moved a couple inches under his efforts. “Just -- let me get this thing -- “

“Let’s go, McCormick.” Cartman looked around at the trees, his ears ringing with imagined sounds, and licked his lips. “This place is giving me the creeps.”

“I think I have some -- “ Kenny set his foot against the concrete shelf around the hole and pulled on the groaning grate with new leverage. “Baby Tylenol in my bag.”

Cartman grit his teeth against the warm swell of rage and scuffed his shoe in the dirt. He was reminded of how much Mysterion pissed him off when they were kids, with his fucking hot shit attitude. 

Cartman glanced down at the portal in the concrete, a gaping black hole beneath the crusty old grate like a muzzled mouth. Or an eye. 

“What’re you doing?” He asked again. “You really wanna look at the shit pit?”

Kenny finally took his hands off the grate and wiped the sweat from his brow. “Just curious. I mean, if it’s just a shit pit, why go to the trouble of putting a grate over it?”

“And this question makes you want to open it up? It could be Manbearpig down there!”

“Manbearpig ain’t real,” he snorted. “Grow a pair, dude -- I didn’t think I was comin’ out here with small potatoes.”

Cartman spat into the dirt and shuffled around to the other side of the well, muttering: “I’ll show _you_ small potatoes,” and set his hands against the grate. 

With a final grumble, the heavy iron grate hit the ground and rolled onto its side. Cartman felt the vibration up in the soles of his feet as it settled with a final thud in the dirt and leaves. McCormick whooped and leapt onto the concrete shelf almost immediately, shining his cell phone light down it. 

“I take it back,” Kenny said, glancing up at Cartman with his tongue between his teeth. “You’re not small potatoes, man. You’re a bad motherfucker.”

Cartman crossed his arms, still discomfited. 

“Whaddayou see?”

“Dunno,” Kenny mumbled, sinking onto his bootheels and leaning dangerously over the eyehole. 

“You fall in there, I’m not risking my neck to fish you out.” Cartman said, but he had a hundred things he’d rather say or do, like wrestle the blond maniac _down_ from there, because the sight of his friend hovering over that black hole filled him with a kind of absolute, gut-sinking, stone-in-a-swamp dread. 

Maybe he heard his thoughts again, this time, because McCormick suddenly leapt down and started legging it for the treeline. But before Cartman could pull himself away from the unlidded eye, he was trotting back with a fallen tree limb the length of a small car dragging behind him.

“ _Now_ what,” Cartman murmured, watching his friend climb back onto the concrete eye socket and pull the wobbling branch up after him. 

“I just wanna see how deep it is.”

And he proceeded to force the branch into the hole, although some of its spiky protrusions were fighting against the maneuver, hanging onto the concrete with long wooden claws like a spider resisting the sink drain. 

“I like the way you lay your wood.”

“I thought you might.” Kenny said, and looked up grinning his crooked grin. “Kind of a tight fit, actually.”

Cartman rolled his eyes. “You wish.”

Finally the branch sunk away with a final screech. Cartman leaned over to watch it disappear into the black. After the screeching faded away, they lingered a while. One minute, two. 

“It’s infinite,” Kenny concluded. 

“It could be a portal, dude. Maybe it goes to the dark tower at the center of the Multiverse, or the ring of Hell where magicians and people who kick dogs go.”

“Maybe it leads to the fourth flavor of ice cream.”

Cartman stared at the hole, then lifted a leg over the lip. “I’m goin’ in.”

Kenny tipped his head back and laughed full-throated to the sky.

For a moment he joined in, but then Cartman felt his mirth drip away and pulled his leg back, imagining the bright orange of McCormick’s jacket disappearing into the portal, his yellow hair and blue eyes fading to sepia and becoming part of the decay. 

Suddenly Eric noticed the bite of the wind against his face. It had picked up in the space of a few breaths, from the spooky whisper over the kitchen floor to a whistling gale that pricked at his eyes and ripped at his collar with cold fingers. 

“Ken,” Cartman’s voice withered to a husk in the ripping wind. He squinted against the tears in his eyes. His stomach had dropped about a hundred meters -- right down the well, it felt like -- and something awful and colorless was rising from his toes in its place. There wasn’t any wind, he realized -- it was the icy breath of the well. 

“What was that?” Kenny said, turning his eyes on the trees surrounding them. “Did you hear that?”

They were both silent for a few moments. Cartman ran his tongue over his lip, found it hopelessly dry, chapped and veined with the coppery taste of blood. 

A crash of scattering leaves echoed through the wood, as if a sack of cement had fallen from the sky. The yawning filled him up again and Cartman felt paralyzed. 

Another crash, this one sharper, more focused. Like it had covered twenty yards in one foul leap.

Another one -- and Cartman was sure of it, something was coming towards them, something that leapt like a Jabba-sized cane toad -- and the shadows lancing back and forth between the trees seemed much more sinister than the dances of leaves -- it was like they were being tracked, closed in on by dark shadows like the certainty of slaughter, like calves on a veal farm or Mexicans north of the border. 

“Cartman! Eric, come on!”

Cartman blinked and realized his friend was directly in front of him, blue eyes wide and swaying back and forth in his vision -- no, wait -- he was the one swaying. 

“Snap out of it, dude, we gotta go!”

Cartman swore. Kenny pulled once at his sleeve and then ran for the treeline. Cartman took off after him, but he was in that peculiar stage of panic that made running like being in a dream -- like he was just too out of touch with his body to settle into a dead sprint. Something cold was on his heels, too, seeping through the back of his coat and falling down his shoulders like a wash of egg yolk -- viscous and heavy, dragging on him like a weight. 

The tedious walk was reduced to a flurry of only a few minutes on the return trip. The pre-winter chill rushed through him and Cartman hit the chain links and started his climb just as McCormick hit the ground on the other side. Once more Cartman felt his fingers sink into the cold dirt as he landed on the other side of the fence on his heels and hands. He started up the hill where the shadows of the ATVs crouched when the sound of struggle caught his attention.

A lump of orange was flipping wildly in the heather at the base of the old fence. 

Cartman skidded back down the rise -- concern over his filthy shoes kind of buzzing in the back of his brain -- and pushed McCormick’s flailing hands away from his leg. He was impossibly twisted up in a ream of old barbed wire, and Kenny was going at it with his pocketknife but Cartman knew you’d needed wire-cutters to get through the shit. The thread was still attached to the crossbeam at the top of the fence, holding the leg at an odd angle. 

“How the fuck did you manage -- “

There was a crash in the wood behind the fence, and Cartman clawed his way up the dirt slope in surprise. The excitement of reaching the hill had almost made him forget about the bump in the woods. It seemed incongruous that it would still be there, chasing them beyond the property -- scary shit was supposed to disappear when you weren’t thinking about it. He looked up toward the crest of the hill and his potential escape, then turned and stared into the cedar grove. There was a whimper of frustration from the fence, but no call for help. 

“Kenny -- I’m really really sorry about this.”

Cartman landed back in the heather on his knees, gripped his struggling friend under the arms and ripped him from the earth and the tangle of wire like a rooted thing. 

“Run!” He shouted hoarsely, as if he’d been yelling all day but really it just felt sacrilegious to break the quiet all around. They scrambled up the hillside, McCormick limping heavily. 

Kenny seemed to consider his Polaris, one hand rooting around in his pocket, but Cartman shoved him toward the passenger side of the other ATV.

“Idiot,” he growled, loping around to the driver’s side.

“What about -- “

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll pay Butters to pick it up later, or something.”

The roar of the engine cut the wind, and the satisfying crunch of shriveled leaves and snapping twigs heralded the movement of the tires. After a minute plunging over the fells and furrows of South Park cropland, Cartman finally managed a deep breath. He had no idea how to talk about what happened back there. 

“Look at it this way,” he paused to clear his throat. “You won’t have to -- buy pants with rips in them.”

As if he’d been waiting for the cue, Kenny began laughing deliriously beside him. 

“Try not to get blood on the seat.”

“I thought you were gonna leave me there.”

Cartman swallowed, with some difficulty, around the lingering panic gummed up around his tonsils.

“Like, I didn’t even consider that you might _not_ , actually.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Cartman snorted. “Sacrificing a babe only makes demons stronger. Everyone knows that. Did I want that thing coming after me for another taste? Hell no.” 

He kept his gaze steadfast on the winding dirt paths in front of him, even when a hand crawled up the back of his head and McCormick’s cold lips pressed to his temple. “I love you, brother.”

Cartman shrugged one shoulder, felt his ears warm. “Gettoff me.”

“What is this?”

A small weight lifted from the inside of his jacket and Cartman glanced over to see the book in Kenny’s hands. 

“I think it’s a book.”

Kenny rolled his eyes, flipped the book over in his hands. “Where did you find it?”

“Fridge in the backyard,” he shrugged again. 

The passenger seat was silent for a bit too long, silent just long enough for Cartman to consider the possibility that he’d fucked up, somehow, by taking it.

**Author's Note:**

> this first chapter is based on true events (except I left the book in the damn fridge because I know what's good for me) and if any of my new hampshire bros are still out there -- I can literally _show_ you this place. I can _take_ you to the infinity portal. 
> 
> I can't get the four-wheelers again, though, 'cause the guy who owned them turned out to be King of the Deuces and too rich for his own good. He was so rich he'd say shit like "I don't have any American on me" when it was time to pick up the bill.
> 
>  
> 
> _edit: i WILL be continuing this story in the future! (i've been gathering material... >>)_


End file.
